If Children, Then Heirs

In a certain sense, all men and women are the children of God.  As our biological parents are our father and mother in the natural and physical sense of the word, our Father in heaven has a far greater claim to paternity by bestowing on us an immortal soul. The moment of our conception, we become the biological child of our parents and the spiritual child of God.

Once we are baptized and slowly advance in years, we start to learn that we have choices to make.  We gradually learn to know the difference between right and wrong.  When we act right, our parents reward us, while any bad behavior on our part leads us to more unpleasant reactions.  This constant exploration of what we can do to make our parents happy or unhappy gradually transforms into a deeper level of knowledge, one that recognizes an action as morally good or bad in itself.  We learn that if we break our parents’ rules (based, hopefully, on the Ten Commandments of God), we are actually offending God our Creator.  And as we learn to love God, the idea of offending him becomes gradually more and more distasteful and even repugnant.  We reach the age of reason.

Now life becomes that all too familiar succession of desires, temptations, sins, and regret.  God’s mercy has provided us with sacraments that help us stay out of trouble and other sacraments that restore us to God’s good graces when we fall.  Men of Good Will strive to be led by the Holy Spirit of God, and in doing so become children of God in a far deeper sense, one in which we are able to cry “Abba, Father.”  These are the ones who stand to inherit the eternal reward purchased by Christ on the Cross.  These are the children of God who are not just children, but heirs, and joint-heirs with Christ.  For by suffering with Christ, says St. Paul in today’s Epistle, “we may be also glorified together with him.”

But what of those who are not of good will?  These are the ones who have deliberately halted their struggles against temptation, choosing instead to rejoice in their iniquity.  With their lack of faith, they have chosen the path of enjoying life to the full in a hedonistic frenzy, yielding to their fallen human nature and utterly oblivious to the damage they do to God’s creation and their fellow-man.  They eventually get around to taking pride in the enormity of their transgressions, turning all of nature upside-down in a deliberate attempt to mock God and his love for us.  While they appear to be having a great time, they are in fact the saddest of God’s creatures, knowing deep down in the bowels of their conscience that they are doomed, for, as St. Paul declares, “if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.”

So as the saying goes, when the going gets tough, let’s be tough and get going!  Let’s fight the good fight, not fearing how tough the fight is, but rather seeing it as our means to salvation, our great test, our living Cross!